When it comes to presidential authoritarianism, Americans now grade on a curve. On his worst day, Joe Biden isn’t in the same league as Donald Trump. Nonetheless, Biden’s statement last week that the US would go to war over Taiwan if China invades constituted an assault on America’s constitutional order. The fact that so many pundits reacted with a shrug shows how decayed that order already is.
But first, a word about this Friday’s Zoom call. In the American political struggle over Israel-Palestine, something has changed. In recent months, AIPAC and its allies have begun spending unheard of amounts of money to defeat politicians who support Palestinian rights and intimidate those who might consider doing so. Do supporters of Palestinian rights have a strategy to respond? And how will they grapple with the growing divide inside the progressive camp: between liberal Zionists who support a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and those further to their left who see Israel, in its entirety, as an apartheid state? On Friday at Noon ET, our usual time, I’ll ask J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami. As always, paid subscribers will get the Zoom link on Wednesday and the video the following week. Join us.
Back to Biden, Taiwan, and the Constitution. Last Monday, a reporter in Tokyo asked Biden if he was “willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?” Biden responded, “Yes.” The stunned reporter asked for clarification: “You are?” To which Biden responded, “That’s the commitment we made.”
Who, exactly, is “we?” If Biden is using the pronoun in the royal sense—to refer to himself—then he’s right. Twice before since assuming the presidency, Biden has pledged the US to defend Taiwan if it’s attacked.
But since the US isn’t a monarchy, “we” in this context is supposed to mean the people. And under the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 11), it is the people’s representatives in Congress—not the President—who are empowered “to declare war.” It’s true that in 1979, Congress passed and the president signed the Taiwan Relations Act, which states that “the United States shall provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character and shall maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or social or economic system, of the people of Taiwan.” But that doesn’t obligate the US to go to war. It merely obligates the US to maintain the “capacity” to “resist” the use of force against the island. What would that mean if China invaded? The Taiwan Relations Act says in the case of “threats” to Taiwan, “the President and the Congress shall determine the appropriate action in response to any such danger.”
So Biden is wrong. The United States has not made a “commitment” to fight to defend Taiwan. And under the Constitution, it cannot do so unless Congress declares war.
The fact that so many pundits—both those who applauded Biden’s decision and those who critiqued it—simply assumed that it’s his to make illustrates how degraded America’s constitutional norms have become when it comes to war and peace. Over the decades, presidents have gotten used to taking—and Congress has gotten used to ceding—the legislative branch’s most awesome power. For more than twenty years now, presidents have been sending US troops to fight and die in “anti-terrorist” operations across the globe under a congressional authorization passed three days after 9/11.
But giving presidents a blank check to fight Boko Haram and Al Shabab is one thing. Giving them a blank check to fight China is another. If the US goes to war over Taiwan, it is likely to lose—and thus end the era of US hegemony that began in 1945. Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, is 11,000 kilometers from San Diego, 8,000 kilometers from Honolulu and 160 kilometers from the nearest point in mainland China. According to a 2015 report by the Rand Corporation, China boasts 39 air bases within 800 kilometers of Taipei. The US boasts one. Once upon a time, America’s military was so much more advanced than China’s that it could overcome that vast geographic disadvantage. That’s no longer the case. In some cutting-edge technologies—for instance, hypersonic missiles—US generals now concede that China has taken the lead. Which helps explain why, as of 2019, the Pentagon had reportedly conducted18 war games with China over Taiwan. Beijing triumphed in every one.
That’s not even the worst news. A war with China over Taiwan could end more than just American primacy. It could end large swaths of human civilization. Two of the Americans who know China best—former ambassador to China J. Stapleton Roy and Chas Freeman, who translated for Richard Nixon when he visited Beijing in 1972—have both warned that a war over Taiwan could turn nuclear. Hugh White, one of Australia’s leading China experts, has concluded that “America will only reliably deter China” from invading Taiwan “if it can convince Beijing that it is willing to start a nuclear war.”
Are the American people up for that? It’s unclear. Polls suggest a considerable gap between foreign policy elites and the public at large. According to a 2020 survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 85 percent of Republican leaders but only 43 percent of Republican voters, and 63 percent of Democratic leaders but only 40 percent of Democratic voters, supported sending US troops to defend Taiwan. Popular support appears to have grown since then: A 2021 Chicago Council poll found that 52 percent of ordinary Americans now support defending Taiwan. But that’s hardly an overwhelming mandate. How would Americans respond if Congress debated and voted on the matter? I don’t know.
We should find out. Florida Senator Rick Scott has introduced legislation authorizing the US to go to war if China invades Taiwan. Instead of pretending that the decision is his alone, Biden should endorse Scott’s bill. The bill’s proponents will argue that the best way to deter China from launching a war is to formally declare that the US would wage one. They might also argue that the risks of allowing Taiwan to fall, which would gravely damage America’s position in the Western Pacific, exceed the dangers that America might lose or risk nuclear war. Let’s see if Americans find that convincing.
A debate that familiarized Americans with the risks of war over Taiwan might also lead them to ask whether the US is doing everything in its to power to avoid one. The answer to that question is no. By backtracking from its decades-old commitments to avoid an official relationship with Taiwan, the Biden administration—like the Trump administration before it—is probably making war more likely. A debate over authorizing war might help illustrate the folly of that shift.
Five years ago, Donald Trump’s victory exposed Americans’ lack of trust in the foreign policy elites that had taken America to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, in the wake of Biden’s victory and the war in Ukraine, the foreign policy establishment has gotten its groove back. It’s girding for a long, expensive, and dangerous struggle against America’s authoritarian great power foes and it is assuming that ordinary Americans will go along for the ride.
Biden’s Taiwan remarks, and the commentariat’s reaction to them, are a symptom of this hubris. It’s time to bring the American people back in.